China GP – Drivers' Scorecard
The fourth GP of the season is over: Formula 1 is now coming to The Old Continent. Once again the Circus surprised us, with almost all cars arrived at finish – excepting Grosjean’s Lotus and Sutil’s Sauber: all teams are achieving extremely high reliability standards. Now they have just less than 3 weeks of intense work: I’m curious to see what will happen in Spain.
As far as now, Formula 1 deserves a good mark – I’d say a Seven – despite the scaremongering about audience decrease. There hadn’t been a F1 race in the Easter weekend for a long time: we cannot forget this aspect. Formula 1 started the season on a rising path, but it’s showing all its qualities very quickly and I’m sure that fights and battles will be back very soon.
Lewis Hamilton – 9 He would certainly deserve a 10, but with the car he’s driving we cannot give the highest mark. He did everything perfect, unlike his teammate.
Fernando Alonso – 9 He was the protagonist of a fantastic race and weekend, despite the F14-T still does not deserve the third step of the podium. From the 44th passage until finish he drove keeping a qualification pace, always pushing and trying to exploit the car at its best, unlike Kimi.
Nico Rosberg – 8 Since qualifications, he did some mistakes – being on the starting grid on the “dirty” side of the track – but then he was able to recover. Perhaps he suffered Hamilton’s pressure.
Daniel Ricciardo – 8 Well deserved for the race. Since the beginning of the season, he’s been showing qualities that I did not imagine: he really deserves to be rewarded.
Kimi Raikkonen – 7 He’s going through a difficult moment, perhaps suffering the troubles of Team Ferrari.
Nico Hulkenberg, Felipe Massa, Daniil Kvyat e Romain Grosjean – 7 In particular for the Lotus driver, for his performance until his car abandoned him.
Sebastian Vettel – 6 An encouraging vote, for the unhappy moment he’s going through.